Like most people I struggled getting my Zune DRM songs onto my Lumia 920. After navigating the Windows Phone 8 desktop/metro app and making sure that my device was listed under Xbox Music, I finally managed to load all my Zune DRM songs. As I'm changing songs I noticed that one of them has the symbol for whenever a song is streaming.

Not sure what's going on, I look up the album on the marketplace and it it's listed as "In Collection." Yet, there's still the streaming symbol. As a test, I put my phone into Airplane mode and tried playing the song again. Instantly got the dreaded "confirm media usage" message. Turned Airplane mode off and the song played just fine.

Thus it appears that Zune DRM can be loaded onto WP8 but requires an active data connection to use it. However, I'm not sure if the data connection is for verifying usage or if it's actually streaming the song.

It would seem you don't have the song physically on your phone. To stream it, you need a connection to get the song.

I think my confusion comes from the fact that it's listed as "In Collection" which means I can't even download it from the Marketplace (Store now). I turned off Cloud storage so it shouldn't be that. Unfortunately, I'm not at home so I can't pull up the syncing software to see.

I purchased the song just to make sure I had a DRM free version. I deleted the streaming version from the device and then synced just the DRM free version. I check the phone and not only is the streaming symbol still there, I suddenly had 3 copies of the same song on my phone. What what whaaat?!? I said screw it and deleted every song from the phone. Then I used the desktop app to re-sync all my music only this time I did not include the playlists. The streaming symbol is gone and I only have 1 copy of the song on my phone, however, now I have duplicates of eight other songs. Not a huge deal, IMO, but strange nonetheless. And "most" of my DRM songs still play.

So I'm just gonna call Zune Pass on WP8 what it is - crap on a crap stick.

If a song shows up in your collection on phone, with streaming symbol, that means it is in your cloud collection. You can tap+hold for option to download. Don't sync songs to your phone if they are already in your cloud collection, just tap+hold to download them. If you buy a song, you will download a DRM free copy. Sync THAT to your PC and back it up somewhere, like SkyDrive. Now forget about it. You own rights to that song, so you will always be able to stream it and download it to all of your Xbox Music devices. It will only let you download it DRM free a certain number of times, which is why you back up that first MP3 copy. But you will always be able to download it DRM'd and will always have a license for it, presumably even if you don't have a Music Pass anymore. Make sense?

If a song shows up in your collection on phone, with streaming symbol, that means it is in your cloud collection. You can tap+hold for option to download. Don't sync songs to your phone if they are already in your cloud collection, just tap+hold to download them. If you buy a song, you will download a DRM free copy. Sync THAT to your PC and back it up somewhere, like SkyDrive. Now forget about it. You own rights to that song, so you will always be able to stream it and download it to all of your Xbox Music devices. It will only let you download it DRM free a certain number of times, which is why you back up that first MP3 copy. But you will always be able to download it DRM'd and will always have a license for it, presumably even if you don't have a Music Pass anymore. Make sense?

Thanks for the advice but I'm pretty convinced the issue is the software. Cloud sync is not activated on my phone or my PC. Syncing the DRM free version did not fix the problem. All that did was create three duplicates of the same song. The only thing that fixed the problem was deleting all the music off the phone and re-syncing everything except the playlists. And somehow I still ended up with duplicates of eight different songs. The problem isn't on my end. I've been using Zune for several years now so I'm used to syncing content between multiple devices. The problem is on Microsoft's end because their software simply doesn't work properly.

The metro sync app messed up my photos. Switched to the desktop app but then that messed up my music. None of my Xbox Music playlists will sync and those songs are DRM free. Drag-and-drop is the least painful solution but even that's not perfect. I got an error message trying to drag/drop an MP4 video.. a video that I shot myself... with the exact same phone... when all I wanted to do was re-sync it so I could show a friend. Nothing should be that complicated. I don't know what it's like syncing on a Windows 7 PC but syncing between Windows 8 and WP8 has been extremely problematic.

Both the apps are still in beta so these are the issues that come with it. That being said everything synched just fine with no duplicates on my 8X only thing is the album art is missing but are now being restored since I just reactivated my music pass.